IE Automatic Component Activation (Changes to IE ActiveX Update)

Back in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to “click to activate” before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer. Because of this, we're removing the “click to activate” behavior from Internet Explorer!

It’s important (and cool) to note that this change will require no modifications to existing webpages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages. We are simply reverting to the old behavior. Once Internet Explorer is updated, all pages that currently require “click to activate” will no longer require the control to be activated. They’ll just work.

Before April 2006

After April 2006 IE Active X update

After April 2008 Removal

Controls Injected Via JavaScript

No “Click to Activate”

No “Click To Activate”

No “Click To Activate”

Controls loaded Direct In HTML (<object>, <embed>, <applet>)

No “Click to Activate”

“Click To Activate” Required

No “Click To Activate”

So you’re probably wondering when we are going to release this update? The first chance will be with an optional preview release, called the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview, available in December 2007 via the Microsoft Download Center. Additionally this change will be made part of the next pre-release versions of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. After giving people enough time to prepare for this change, we’ll roll this behavior into the IE Cumulative Update in April 2008, and all customers who install the update will get the change.

If you have a custom application using WebOC or MSHTML, there may be some changes that affect your application. For example:

If your application uses the DOCHOSTUI flag to opt-in to the current “Click To Activate” behavior, that behavior will continue to be respected and your application will require “Click To Activate”

If you application uses the registry key FEATURE_ENABLE_ACTIVEX_INACTIVATE_MODE to opt-in to the current “Click To Activate” behavior, this registry key will no long be respected. If you wish to continue to use the “Click to Activate” behavior, please use the DOCHOSTUI flag.

In the coming weeks, we'll be updating the MSDN article with descriptions of the new behavior. Keep an eye out here for when the preview goes live.

About time. Why didn’t MS just license this from Eolas after they lost the case? The money it must have cost to make and support (and revert) this change must have been comparable to whatever (idiotic) licensing they wanted to charge.

Please don’t make us wait until April 2008… that click to activate is seriously annoying. The sooner you could change IE back, the better.

I don’t know why they were granted a patent, nor why the patent was allowed to stand on something so BLOODY OBVIOUS (Rarely is it obvious to make things work differently rather than exactly the same…) But here we are, none the less.

Sadly, suing Microsoft seems to be an entire industry all unto itself. Even sader, it is usually for stuff that no other company would ever, ever get sued for.

I find it totally retarded that you did such an anti-user-friendly change for purely legal reasons; even more since it can be worked around by the website owner using JS (how come *that* isn’t a legal problem too?)

"Why didn’t MS just license this from Eolas after they lost the case? The money it must have cost to make and support (and revert) this change must have been comparable to whatever (idiotic) licensing they wanted to charge."

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At the time Eolas said they would never license this to MS because they wanted to use the patent to cripple IE so that users would move to other browsers. Eolas said they did this "because MS = teh evil!" That’s why they never went after any other browsers even though all the other browsers "infringe" on their "patent" in the exact same way that IE supposedly does.

IMO, the patent was BS, and the fact that the Javascript workaround circumvented it shows that the patent brought nothing new to the table. That and the fact that the Patent Office reversed its stance on the patent multiple times (sometimes upholding it, sometimes striking it down, and even sometimes awarding a patent on the same stuff to Microsoft). This case should be Exhibit A for Patent Reform.

"Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer."

I’m confused, how to you have to have a license to remove something? What (in plain English) is the specific action that Eolas is trying to patent? The installation of a plugin, a warning about installing a plugin, etc?

Please add an option to continue this behavior (and extend it to ALL controls, including those injected via JavaScript.)

Third-party controls are a major cause of browser slowdowns and crashes; there’s nothing like opening a new tab and having a control you did not want activated bring the system to a standstill or the browser down completely.

I would suggest adding a "prompt every time" setting in addition to the "enable" and "disable" settings in the manage add-ons dialog box. (This would be a great way, e.g., to screen out unnecessary Flash advertisements yet be able to use Flash when necessary.)

Another good reason why the patent system needs to be done away with. Patents kill people by denying drugs etc and frustration and cost to others (this) – There has to be a better way to reward innovation (and what innovation is truly unique,everything builds on something else!). Eloas is certainly a patent too far – its just obvious…..

I would really advise that you provide setting to disable/enable this feature. I happen to personally like that I can control what content runs when I view page; however, my clients really do not like it when their viewers have to click to make the navigation or other design elements work.

This doesn’t make any difference to browsing speed or security. The "Click to Activate" thing does NOT prevent a control from running. "Click to Activate" only prevents a user from interacting with the control until they have clicked on it. This was never and should never be seen as a security enhancement.

Use the "Manage Add-ons" option under tools if you want to prevent controls from actually running.

Allowing ActiveX to silently run along with the 8mb ie temp files cache minimum is lowering IE’s security. Please keep the ‘prompt on ActiveX run’ as well as let us disable IE’s local disk cache (no temp files) and also ‘clear all IE data on IE close’. Many secure environments, banks and financial firms, have to block un-approved software (i.e, ActiveX controls) and/or remove temporary data for auditing compliance from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Succinctly, allowing an application to install itself with approval from the computer owner is a bad practice. A software company/writer relying on an undocumented workaround to circumvent this need for customer approval is also a bad practice since the software company/writer is displaying that they are not concrened with security of their application as well as the security of the end user’s machine.

Flash runs anyway. If you want to stop flash from using CPU cycles then disable it or set it to prompt in the Magae add-ons option of IE.

"Click to activate" does not stop a control such as flash from running when the page is loaded. The functionality was nothing to do with stopping controls from running. It was simply a silly workaround to an even sillier patent.

I just want to note that Microsoft announced on November 8th that they will be removing the "click to activate" in April 2008 as a cumulative update and as an optional update in December 2007 Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/08/ie-aut..

Please give us the option to keep "Click to Activate". I heard about this change a few weeks ago and was dismayed that Microsoft is being forced to do this. I know the majority want this default behavior removed, but I very much wish to keep it.

What a costly change for Microsoft and for all the web developers. And wasted time and effort to all the users who had to click to activate anything on a web page. All we did was move a big pile of rocks from one place to another and then back again.

I would like an option in order to block some activex installation requests. It’s very annoyng when I go on a site and I see a yellow bar request to install an activex. Please add an option to deny it FOREVER.

Why bother? At this point, anyone who hasn’t switched to the JavaScript method of emdedding object is a pretty shoddy developer, or just doesn’t care about his users exerience. I can’t believe that Microsoft would actually pay Eolas for such a stupid patent. This is why the patent laws are so screwed up.

I hate all the stupid websites that use Javascript to add Flash, all because of Microsoft adding this retarded "click to activate" crap. I get a message saying I don’t have flash when actually what I don’t have enabled is JS.

Woo hooo! 🙂 "Back in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to “click to activate” before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now…

Agree with Mark Sowul. It was just a tiny amount of cash for Mircosoft. Microsoft should have licensed this patent earlier, even though this patent is stupid. That would have saved efforts of developers around the global.

Will you apologize to developers for this shambles of a stumbling block that we’ve had to work around for the past year and a half? (and will have to continue to do so for another two years max while the update filters onto people’s systems).

And will you please stop acting like you’re the victim of Eolas. With so many development resources available I don’t believe there wasn’t a way you could have worked around it. No other browser ever had to do this.

Also, is this going to be for IE6 too? I tried to avoid getting the original update in the first place – but Microsoft snuck it onto the system somehow and now even IE6 is demanding I "Click to Activate".

Well, it seems to be the most expensive removal of one click in a whole browser history, isn’t it? The settlement was (afaik) about 500 megs of bucks… that’s a huge lunch! 😉

For all who say that this patent is stupid: I’ll tell you something: The whole patent system is stupid and I think that it would be better to live even without THIS system than with such a crap, what US patent system is (I personaly think that the world can easily, particulary MORE easily live without any patents at all).

OK, for those who cannot live without patents: you have to deal with those situations that you must pay megs of bucks for such primitive things.

I’m amazed that only 2 or 3 people have pointed out how bad this is. Acknowledge Eolas’ ridiculous patent? I was ready for a class action lawsuit against Eolas, myself. The patent is fraudulent, and the US court system failed. By licensing the patent it seals the coffin on any future cases.

Microsoft may be evil, but Eolas’ patent is worse. I will be diligently looking for a patent to use against them.

"Why didn’t MS just license this from Eolas after they lost the case? The money it must have cost to make and support (and revert) this change must have been comparable to whatever (idiotic) licensing they wanted to charge."

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At the time Eolas said they would never license this to MS because they wanted to use the patent to cripple IE so that users would move to other browsers. Eolas said they did this "because MS = teh evil!" That’s why they never went after any other browsers even though all the other browsers "infringe" on their "patent" in the exact same way that IE supposedly does.

IMO, the patent was BS, and the fact that the Javascript workaround circumvented it shows that the patent brought nothing new to the table. That and the fact that the Patent Office reversed its stance on the patent multiple times (sometimes upholding it, sometimes striking it down, and even sometimes awarding a patent on the same stuff to Microsoft). This case should be Exhibit A for Patent Reform.

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Topaz writes:

Then why did Microsoft agree to settle with EOLAS after the appeals court ruled in Microsoft’s favor and ordered a new trial? If Microsoft was so certain the patent was BS, why didn’t they go forward with a new trial?

What’s despicable is that Microsoft used people who use IE and forced them to "click to activate" as a means of getting around the whole EOLAS mess and not accepting responsibility. The real BS is Microsoft using people as a pawn to patch their legal affairs.

And worse is the delay (April 2008) in releasing the patch that will get rid of the "click to activate" nonsense. Microsoft needs to release it TODAY, not five months from now.

But by now hordes of people have worked on making scripts to go around that annoyance.

Scripts like UFO, SWFObject, WMPObject.

Those scripts have now taken on a life of their own, having been pushed to great heights and taken way beyond the merely busy work which was the elimination of the "click to activate this control" mess.

It’s about time MS did something about this.I mean come on how long can it take to add an update like this if there is a lot of people working on the same thing?

Shoot why take so long to get back to the No Click to Activate Control feature that should have never been removed to begin with?

At least you are making things right again at long last.Also please be sure that this No Click to Activate Control stays forever.So many of us like it the way it was with the No Click to Activate.

I have Friends online who hate this Click to Activate control too.Here is a list of effected things that had workarounds because of the change that should never have been made to begin with.You can see these just below:

Online Windows Media Player Movies

Online Quicktime Media Player Movies

Online Shockwave Media Player Movies

Other Online Media Player Movies

Online Banners with links back to websites who made them.

Embeded Jukebox Music Players

Online Chat Room Apps

Online PC Games

Online Magazine Sites

Online PC Game Sites

Some Message Board Apps

Some Online Site Creation Apps

There are more for this list but i can’t think of any more.With the Re Addition of the No Click to Activate those problems will be fixed.

I am sure my friends will agree with me on these that i listed for everyone to agree or disagree about.

I am going to be happy to get this update.I know those who hate Click to Activate will like it too.

"Then why did Microsoft agree to settle with EOLAS after the appeals court ruled in Microsoft’s favor and ordered a new trial? If Microsoft was so certain the patent was BS, why didn’t they go forward with a new trial?

What’s despicable is that Microsoft used people who use IE and forced them to "click to activate" as a means of getting around the whole EOLAS mess and not accepting responsibility. The real BS is Microsoft using people as a pawn to patch their legal affairs."

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Topaz, I don’t now what Microsoft was certain of, I’m saying that the patent was BS in my own opinion.

And BTW, someone above said that Opera had the same problem with Eolas, and I just verified that Opera has the "Click to Activate" thing too. I guess Opera is just as evil and/or incompetent as Microsoft, right? Grow up.

Every browser that has a plugin mechanism "violates" this BS patent. Eolas only decided to go after IE and Opera, but they could’ve just as easily gone after Firefox, Safari, etc, but they didn’t because they had an agenda. Open your eyes and see what really happened so you don’t any further publicly make yourself sound like a fool.

BTW IE TEAM, THE OTHER DAY I WAS PLAYING WITH THE IE6 VPC IMAGE (THE LATEST ONE) AND I SET THE DATE TO JANUARY 2008 EVERYWHERE, IN THE BIOS, ON THE HOST OS, IN THE VM ITSELF AND YET IT DIDN’T EXPIRE. HAS MS GIVEN AWAY A COPY OF XP PROFESSIONAL? CAN YOU CONFIRM THAT IT DOESN’T EXPIRE?

ROFL. Yeah, it’s "despicable" they worked around a garbage patent. It’s a shame it was ever accepted in the first place. It seems "despicable" to me that they did not go after other browser makers.

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Topaz writes:

LMAO. Microsoft worked around a "garbage patent" by inconveniencing the users? That’s ok to do to people? To customers? Nothing wrong with that? Are you kidding me or what? I’d like to see you be inconvenienced because of somebody else’s actions or behavior and see how you like it.

EOLAS didn’t go after other browser makers because that’s the legal decision they made. Microsoft could have legally challenged that in court for failure to join indispensable parties, but they choose not to.

Topaz, I don’t now what Microsoft was certain of, I’m saying that the patent was BS in my own opinion.

And BTW, someone above said that Opera had the same problem with Eolas, and I just verified that Opera has the "Click to Activate" thing too. I guess Opera is just as evil and/or incompetent as Microsoft, right? Grow up.

Every browser that has a plugin mechanism "violates" this BS patent. Eolas only decided to go after IE and Opera, but they could’ve just as easily gone after Firefox, Safari, etc, but they didn’t because they had an agenda. Open your eyes and see what really happened so you don’t any further publicly make yourself sound like a fool.

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Topaz writes:

If that patent was BS, why was EOLAS’s litigation successful? The court ruled in their favor. EOLAS won. You do remember the law don’t you? Smarten up.

EOLAS didn’t go after other browser makers because that’s the legal decision they made. Microsoft could have legally challenged that in court for failure to join indispensable parties, but they choose not to. Get the wax out of your ears. Listen to the reality of what happened so you don’t continue to make yourself look like an incompetent in public.

Read up on the history of the patent and you’ll see that it was overturned and unoverturned multiple times. This patent is a bullshit patent. Microsoft settled to get it out of the way, you idiot.

Why do I not see you criticizing Opera for not challenging the patent or not working around it? Actually, what the hell is your position? Are you criticizing Microsost (yet not Opera) for settling or not? Do you think it’s a valid patent or not? You’re all over the place and sounding like a complete and utter asshole.

Topaz, why are you not criticizing Opera for also using Microsoft’s "Click to Activate" workaround? Actually, it’s unclear what your criticism actually is. You hate Microsoft, that much is clear, but your posts here have no substance to them. Just mindless ranting.

Read up on the history of the patent and you’ll see that it was overturned and unoverturned multiple times. This patent is a bullshit patent. Microsoft settled to get it out of the way, you idiot.

Why do I not see you criticizing Opera for not challenging the patent or not working around it? Actually, what the hell is your position? Are you criticizing Microsost (yet not Opera) for settling or not? Do you think it’s a valid patent or not? You’re all over the place and sounding like a complete and utter asshole.

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Topaz writes:

Get out of this blog you stupid troll. You’re nothing but a coward for insulting me using the internet as a shield. My 9 year old daughter is braver and has more class than you do. Betcha you wouldn’t insult me to my face like that.

It’s not the history of the patent that matters but the ruling of the court that does. A jury entered a verdict in EOLAS favor and awarded EOLAS a judgment against Microsoft for $520 million. You call that a BS patent? It gets better. An appelate court ordered a new trial because the trial court erred in not letting in evidence to support Microsoft’s claim that the infringed patent is invalid because the technology had already been developed and showed in a 1993 demonstration by inventor Pei-Yuan Wei. Yet, Microsoft choose to settle! If it’s such a BS patent, why did they settle? If Microsoft was so sure it was a BS patent, they would have proceeded to a new trial, certainly money for legal fees isn’t a problem for Microsoft. Stop feeding on all the propoganda out there and take a dose of the truth.

And Opera is guilty of the same BS Microsoft is, subjecting users to that nonsense. And guess what? I use Internet Explorer (since 1999).

Slightly off-topic, but how about tidying up the markup for the data table in this blog entry?

<ul>

<li><code>&lt;th></code> is for header cells. Its default styling includes <code>text-align: center;</code> and <code>font-weight: bold;</code>, too.</li>

<li><code>&lt;td></code> is for data cells. Its default styling of <code>text-align: left;</code> helps line-wrapped sentences be more readable.</li>

<li>Remove “Click To Activate” for every data cell. They only need to say Yes or No. There would be no need to use red text in the "Yes" cell. Especially since you are using <code>&lt;FONT></code> for that.</li>

<li>Remove every attribute from the table.

</ul>

This blog makes good use of elements for paragraphs, lists and headings. Raising the quality of this tables would set a good example.

Oh, you could mark up inline code samples with <code>&lt;code></code> to help them stand out from normal text. For example: <code>FEATURE_ENABLE_ACTIVEX_INACTIVATE_MODE</code>. (Hopefully your comments allow basic markup so that example will make sense sense.)

1) Why is this page written in XHTML if Internet Explorer does not entirely support XHTML correctly?

2) Why are there uppercase tags in this document?

3) Why are LI tags not being closed when this is supposedly XHTML?

4) Why are both STRONG and B present (why is either present would be a good question)?

5) And just to be a real code snob, why is this written as follows:

function ValidatorOnSubmit() {

if (Page_ValidationActive) {

return ValidatorCommonOnSubmit();

}

else {

return true;

}

}

When it could just as easily be written as (and for the other Evil Code Nazis, yeah, there’s an approach that avoids the branching on every call – but it has other problems):

function ValidatorOnSubmit() {

return (Page_ValidationActive ? ValidatorCommonOnSubmit() : true);

}

I could go on but I will not (Actually, I will 😛 I just *LOVE* some of the JavaScript ASP.NET creates, and how the SCRIPT tags are being done differently E.g. some have type="text/javascript", and some additionally have the language attribute, and then there’s the whole HTML Comments vs. CDATA thing).

Anyways… It works, and the "Remember Me?" thing has a label set up properly, so I shall stop complaining now. I somehow doubt anything will be done about these problems since it’s working.

It was a BS patent, plain and simple. It should never have got into the patent system, but it did and therefore MS lost the case.

Most probably they settled due to the risk of losing, even with the new evidence.

It is likely the recent settlement is a lot less than $520 mill, with ongoing licensing costs (while Firefox and other FOSS’s get free licensing, which is added insult).

I have no problem MS getting around that crap with the click to activate.

Anyway, aren’t there more important issues in the world to rave about? Poverty for example?

_________________________________

Topaz writes:

The real troll was the "hillary" who insulted me (that’s what trolls do) and I confronted her about it, and I wasn’t going to allow her to get away with that, and repaid her in kind.

It’s a BS patent because you say so? It should never have got into the patent system because you say so? The US Patent and Trademark Office is wrong but you’re right?

Then, let’s just throw away a patent, hell, the whole patent system because some people say hey, I really believe this patent is BS and I’m going to go ahead and use it for myself anyway and ignore the law. Are you kidding me or what?

I agree that most probably Microsoft settled due to the risk of losing, even with the new evidence. Therefore, it’s not such a BS patent now is it?

While you may not have a problem with Microsoft getting around the patent by using "click to activate" and you don’t mind being inconvenienced, the majority of people, myself included, do have a problem with it, don’t care to be inconvenienced, and resent being used by Microsoft as pawns in their legal games.

Yes there are much more important issues in the world like poverty, but this is a blog about the Microsoft "click to activate" component activation, not about poverty.

____________________________________

xartx wrote:

Read up on the history of the patent and you’ll see that it was overturned and unoverturned multiple times. This patent is a bullshit patent. Microsoft settled to get it out of the way, you idiot.

____________________________________

Topaz writes:

Get off this blog you stupid troll! You’re a coward for insulting me behind the shield of the internet. You wouldn’t have the guts to say that to my face.

Read up on the history of the matter of Eolas Technologies, Incorporated vs Microsoft Corporation (U.S. Courts). Microsoft got a new trial from an appellate court. A great legal victory for them. However, Microsoft choose to settle. Microsoft doesn’t have a case. If they thought they had a good chance of winning again, they never would have settled. you fool.

To keep it short (and I’ll probably post a YouTube video or post this on my site) add CSS3 target property support in addition to the other CSS3 properties and support for application/xhtml+xml and IE8 could by a professional web designer’s objective analysis be Web 3.0 capable.

Yeah you’re right. I don’t know enough about the US patent system, the patent in question or the case for that matter. I found the patent difficult to swallow due to similarities in existing technology.

"We appreciate you intent to file IE feedback. The IE site on Microsoft Connect was intended for beta feedback. The IE 7 team discontinued feedback on our site when the product released about a year ago. As largely a beta site, we do not often become involved with feedback for released products. Feedback for IE 7 is now submitted through normal support channels."

The feedback site is for IE7 and future versions of IE. Feedback for the current version under development will be taken through the site. Once IE7 has shipped, it will be used to report issues with IE7 to examine for following versions."

Hmm, that didn’t work, now did it.

"As an issue is worked on, you should expect to see comments added to the bug giving some details."

Yeah, that kind of died didn’t it. Not only is the site gone now, there’s not even any updates in the IE blog.

"There will be an ongoing blog for feedback created in the near term which will cover the top issues reported during the week"

Hmm, yeah maybe I missed the announcement, where is this blog?

Lets not forget the most important quote in the entire blog post:

"After much discussion on the team, we’ve decided that people are right and that we should have a public way for people to give us feedback or make product suggestions. We wanted to build a system that is searchable and can benefit from the active community that IE has here."

7 months later, and Feedback was closed.

I realize that Al and Dave have moved on to greener fields, but the efforts made to have IE development involve the community resources for a better IE seem to have been all but forgotten.

THREE HUNDRED AND NINETY ONE days into the NO 2-WAY COMMUNICATION with the MICROSOFT IE TEAM, I think I’ve just about had enough.

I wonder when the IE8 beta will be? It’s been more than 12 months since IE7 went out the door. Surely, a beta would have to happen in the next couple of months (at most) if IE8 would want to not have a 24 month release cycle. Who knows what the reality is? No one here is talking.

I know for a fact that there is an IE team still. I have friends that are still on the project or who have left in the last six months. They aren’t feeding me data or anything but I know for a fact that the IE team exists and is, well, working on IE. The details of that work are what is lacking. Given Dean’s previous promise during IE7 to not go dark again and to release often, I’m just wondering what the plan is after a year.

Kyle, thanks. I mostly work on organizing and testing the security releases and in the new Places feature for Firefox 3, which replaces the existing bookmarks and history system with a sqlite backend and a bunch of APIs for talking to it. It’s cool stuff.

In other words, rc, no matter how many times you post on every blog post here that the IE team doesn’t exist, you’re still wrong. 🙂 I’m not sure what the motivation is when people do come and go from the IE team and members of it have spoken to people at various companies, including the Mozilla Corporation, at conferences and meetings in the last while. It exists.

It is like an absolutely perfect environment where the developer community can not only see what is going on, not only report issues they find, submit test cases, and track bugs and features, but should the development team not have the time or resources, YOU the clever developer can even contribute code to fix things!

In contrast, ALL WEB DEVELOPERS have NO IDEA what is happening in IE DEVELOPMENT, we can’t submit BUGS, we can’t request FEATURES, we can’t TRACK a gosh darn thing, and there isn’t even a 50,000ft overview of what is going on in IE8?!

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears blatantly obvious to me that Microsoft does not care one iota about the Developer Community!?

Feedback was closed "temporarily"…. by anyones definition, is not "Over a year".

I know that focus has likely been put on Vista (because of a complete lack of sales), but lets be honest, without a state-of-the-art web browser in the OS, you haven’t got a complete OS.

It is like an absolutely perfect environment where the developer community can not only see what is going on, not only report issues they find, submit test cases, and track bugs and features, but should the development team not have the time or resources, YOU the clever developer can even contribute code to fix things!

In contrast, ALL WEB DEVELOPERS have NO IDEA what is happening in IE DEVELOPMENT, we can’t submit BUGS, we can’t request FEATURES, we can’t TRACK a gosh darn thing, and there isn’t even a 50,000ft overview of what is going on in IE8?!

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears blatantly obvious to me that Microsoft does not care one iota about the Developer Community!?

Feedback was closed "temporarily"…. by anyones definition, is not "Over a year".

I know that focus has likely been put on Vista (because of a complete lack of sales), but lets be honest, without a state-of-the-art web browser in the OS, you haven’t got a complete OS.

DelfinoM, A google search for "firefox sucks", comes back with 18,800 results. Sure, if you remove the quotes, I can get the same value you did, but let’s think about this for a second:

a) These results have no context applied to them.

b) Searching for "firefox AND sucks", like you did, is even worse. There is no rule that states which order those words are in, nor is there a rule that would prohibit this kind of result:

Internet Explorer sucks, Firefox does not. (contains both FIREFOX and SUCKS, does it not?)

Any idiot can criticize someone/something else. They often do. Trolling is easy and people with half a brain can see through this crap. Please do not feed the trolls. Do not kid yourself into thinking that you can reason with them.

I think the other links to professional corporate PC software reviews shows the more scary reality. People don’t like Vista, and they aren’t thrilled to bits about IE7 either.

My concern is for this blog. It stopped being useful the day IE7 shipped. This blog is mainly for developers that want to follow the progress of IE, but there has not been any discussed here in 12 months.

Finally. Microsoft Internet Explorer users, which comprise 76% of the Internet world, will no longer have to "click to activate" when viewing embedded controls such as flash movies on web pages. Microsoft had kept the requirement in order to avoid…

One of the most annoying developments over recent years has been the &quot;Click here to active this control&quot; message you get whenever visiting sites that use Flash or other browser plugin technology. The worst is when it is used in a menu or some